China’s largest seller of battery-electric vehicles is creeping up on the world leader.
BYD
is chasing down
Tesla.
BYD (1211.Hong Kong) announced new energy deliveries of 261,105 units for July. That’s both plug-in hybrids and battery-electric vehicles. Of the total, about 134,800 were all battery-electric, up from about 81,000 BEVs sold in July 2022.
For the past three months, BYD has delivered about 383,000 BEVs. Tesla (TSLA), which reports deliveries quarterly, delivered about 466,000 BEVs in the second quarter. Those two numbers mean that BYD is delivering more than 80% of the volume of Tesla’s deliveries on a quarterly basis.
At the two companies’ current growth rates, BYD might take the lead in a few more quarters. Of course, it might not happen. It’s tougher to grow when numbers get larger and Tesla has shown a willingness to sacrifice profit margin for volume growth. It cut prices around the world for its EVs aggressively in early 2023.
Who is number one and number two matters for bragging rights. While it’s only a number it is one way to measure EV dominance. What’s more, BYD and Tesla vehicle lineups don’t perfectly overlap. Tesla, for instance, sells more expensive cars. Tesla is more profitable than BYD as well and sells in more markets around the globe.
Tesla, of course, has a much bigger lead over BYD in market capitalization. Its shares are worth roughly $820 billion while BYD’s market cap is roughly $110 billion.
What BYD and Tesla results show is that the strong are getting stronger. Combined, Tesla and BYD have delivered almost 1.6 million EVs over the past six months, up about 70% year over year. Two smaller EV makers,
XPeng
(XPEV) and
NIO
(NIO) have delivered about 114,000 EVs over the past six months, down about 4% year over year.
BYD shares are down about 0.9% in overseas trading. BYD U.S.-listed ADRs fell 1.3% in Monday trading. The
S&P 500
and
Nasdaq Composite
fell 0.3% and 0.4%, respectively. Tesla stock dropped 2.4%.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
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